Our turkeys are listed on craigslist for sale or trade. It’s time for them to move on. We do not have the freezer space to send them all to freezer camp. They are all over 20 pounds with the exception of the hen (we think it’s a girl).

She’s a feisty girl and loves her food. She loves being in the front yard more than in the backyard run. She would lay in the nest box but no egg. She tired and practiced for weeks. We encouraged her and so did the other pullets by signing the egg song.

Even Mr. Rooster helped out by singing the egg song along with them.

Finally after weeks of practice we found

It was a small egg but it was perfect. The shell wasn’t to thick or to thin. Just really a perfect little egg. We were all so proud of her and waiting for the next egg. I even posted on the egg song thread all about her first egg! She was very sporadic about her laying though. We would find maybe one egg a week from her while the others were laying every day.

Lola has a thing for our shed in the front yard. It is where we store bales of straw and alpha. Today we could not find her in the back run so we checked the shed.

There she was

We tried to move her off the nest but she pecked us and no amount of treats would make her budge. So we left her to her egg laying business (we hoped) and checked back in a couple of hours.

This is what we found

She has been hiding her eggs!

I think that Lola has told the other girls about her hiding spot and they are laying there as well because of the different color of the eggs.

Before we got our chicks I did a lot of research trying to figure out what is the best thing to feed. I ran across several blogs and forum posts on fermented feed. The problem with it was it was so complicated and my brain refused to wrap itself around the information in a way that I could understand. I just could not seem to “get it” let alone try and reproduce it!

If you’ve been strolling around the WWW, no doubt you’ve found a boat load of recipes for chicken foods to be fermented, and those using multiple buckets with holes drilled in the bottom; rotating them in and out so they always have a batch going.

Ya. That’s not going to happen on my planet. 😆 Ain’t nobody got time for that here!

So. Let me repeat. Water + feed + 3 to 4 days for initial ferment. Whatever you’re feeding now- ferment that. Add some water, stir, wait 3 to 4 days, stirring a few times a day. That’s really all there is to it.”

We noticed that the turkeys were reaching maturity by the change in color on their heads and they were also “puffing” up more. Then about three days ago we noticed the three tom turkeys ganging up on Mr. Rooster. They kept getting in fights, with Mr. Rooster always seeming to be the winner.

Yesterday the turkeys cornered Peepers, attacked and killed him.

RIP Peepers

Today we noticed that Mr. Rooster is limping. I cannot find a wound on him anywhere so I’m hoping that he sprained something and will mend. For now we are keeping him in a hospital pen in the run with the flock. This will limit his mobility but he’ll still be with his flock.

chilling out with R

As soon as we free up some freezer space the turkeys are going to freezer camp and some will be given to neighbors!

What I'm talking about

Everything on this blog is copyright protected!

Please respect that this site is copyright protected. Do not take anything from this website/blog/wordpress site without written permission from the author of this blog. We will vigorously protect our content, which includes copyrighted photographs!